Entry Way Or Exit Titles

What’s the goal of the education session title?

I bet you said, “To get someone to attend the conference education session.”

Well that’s wrong! You just failed conference marketing 101!

The goal of the session title is to get you to read the first sentence of the session description. The goal of the first sentence is to get you to read the next sentence. And so forth until you’ve read everything and say, “Hmm, that sounds like it’s worth attending.”

It’s the whole package that counts and your session title is the entry way or exit for the reader!

Writing an education session title that clearly states what the session covers may be to the point but does it attract?

No, not really.

And when you have lots of boring, ineffective education session titles, the reader automatically assumes that the entire conference is going to be average.

Your Title Should Appeal To The Reader’s Emotions

Communication is the key to effective marketing. The key to marketing is reaching your client at an emotional level.

Your education session title needs to invoke an emotional response in the reader.

Research by Dr. Hakim Chishti shows that our emotions are affected by the sounds of words. Some words have built-in tones that impact specific areas of our mind. Those tones have a meaning regardless if the word is spoken out loud or within in our mind.

Dr. Chishti and his team developed special algorithms that analyzed English words for their emotional impact in three areas: intellectual, empathetic and spiritual. They created a free Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) tool that scores your headline based on its EMV. The tool allows you to identify the business or industry you’re trying to attract with the headline as well.

The higher the EMV, the more likely the headline will attract. Most headlines score between 30%-40% EMV. Skilled marketers’ craft headlines that score between 50%-75% EMV. Check out how to use the tool below.

I suspect that most of conference education titles score less than 30% EMV, thus repelling readers.

The next time you’re working on conference education sessions, use the EMV tool to develop better titles that attract your readers. And don’t forget the emotional appeal!

PS: The title of this blog post received a 84.72% EMV for the community and government industry.

What type of education session title attracts you? Why do so many believe that conference education titles have to be simple and straight forward, lacking any emotional appeal?

Not only have I shared this post and the online EMV tool with our staff team but we are implementing new changes.

Now, any marketing communication, session title, magazine headline, cover teaser blurb, etc. needs to have the title run through the analyzer and provide its score before it is approved. Our first goal is titles with at least 35% EMV. As our team grows and learns, I hope to have our titles hitting that lovely 50% or more score.